Photo: The Baden Baden Synagogue burns on Kristallnacht I remember the look on Martin’s face when he told me. It was pure astonishment on his part, and he had been the detective, unaware of what he was to uncover. Amanda Foreman (who had known Martin since her childhood) and Lisa Jardine…
Photo: The revamped Metropole Hotel, which had been requisitioned during both the First and Second World Wars as the Metropole Building, redone in 2007 as the Corinthia Hotel, Northumberland Avenue, London Note: While preparing a “Churchill-lite” tour of London for a former Hillsdale Churchill Fellow, Lillian Quinones, I found this…
Sir Martin’s map in the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights & Genocide Education, Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, New Jersey, chhange.org (Below) Sam Freiman recently visited his cousins Elfriede Schlesinger (on Sam’s right) and Adrienne Aldermeshian (on Sam’s left) at the Museum in New Jersey. Sam is holding a copy of Sir…
Winston Churchill had a way with words. So may I be forgiven for quoting Churchill to speak for me in honouring my dear husband who would be celebrating his birthday this month? Martin and I were married for ten years. On September 12, 1918, Churchill wrote to his wife Clementine…
I was born on 25 October 1936, three weeks after the Battle of Cable Street, and therefore have no recollections of it. I have prepared an account of it from contemporary documents, the newspapers of the time, and the recollections of some of those who took part in it for…
Photo: Jack Brauns, Martin, Avraham Tory, in Israel, 1980s (Jack Brauns, a survivor of Kovno, was the son of Dr Moshe Brauns, Director of the Jewish Hospital and Head of Infectious Diseases in the Ghetto) Like all the captive peoples – Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Greeks, Dutch, Danes, and many more…
Photo: One of the Russian-built pits as fuel depots, used by the Germans as a mass murder site, into which the Jews of Vilna were shot, in the Paneriai Forest. In September 2001, Martin and I were in Lithuania. Still reeling from the shock of 9/11, we were on the…
Facebook’s Peter Stern who is on Facebook’s Community Standards team recently wrote to Holocaust educators in response to Facebook’s decision to allow “inaccuracies”. He wrote that “Facebook rejects hate” though allows “things that are wrong or untrue”. But, as my late father would say: “One thing leads to another.” How…
The Sir Martin Gilbert Learning Centre is delighted to introduce its Friday morning learning series, “Topics in Modern Jewish History”, to begin on Friday 5th October. The series, like the Centre, aims to make historical learning accessible and engaging, particularly on the subjects close to Sir Martin’s heart: the Holocaust,…
Photo: Claude Lanzmann in his study Holocaust Survivor, French Resistance Fighter, Filmmaker I never met Claude Lanzmann, and I am ashamed to admit that I never watched the whole of his 9 ½ hour film Shoah. I did however have correspondence with him and through the impetus for that, and…
A vital part of the success of the RAF was played by Bomber Command. Sir Martin was involved in an attempt to see those who took part in Bomber Command awarded with a campaign medal, an honour that has still sadly eluded them. In 2008 he wrote this dedication: My…
Also in the June mailbag came this email from Janice Harris in New Zealand, who found her great-uncle listed in one of Sir Martin’s Indexes on the website: “I’m researching my genealogy, and my great uncle, Samuel Howes, was chauffeur to Sir Winston Churchill during the Wilderness Years. I found…
Photo: Sir Martin’s books, 1 to 88, in various editions I was quite overwhelmed by the responses from my last piece (in the June newsletter), not only from those who have followed me through the many ups and downs (or downs and downs) of the last few years, but also from…
On Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, Winston Churchill was Minister of Munitions. As Big Ben struck 11, and the guns fell silent on the Western Front, he was looking out of his ministerial window over Northumberland Avenue. The broad street was deserted. Suddenly, as he wrote, he saw “the slight…
The new data protection laws coming into effect offer an opportunity for many of us to take a look at the newsletters we receive, and those we send. Because the readers of the Sir Martin Gilbert Newsletters have personally subscribed, and with our double opt-in, you need not resubscribe. But…
Photo: Winston Churchill with his son Randolph and daughter Mary at an American military cemetery near Namur, 15th July 1946, from Churchill, A Life. 6 June 1968 found Sir Martin on the beach in Portugal where he received word that his former boss Randolph Churchill, Sir Winston’s son, had died. Martin…
Refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and the concerns regarding them seem to have become a permanent fixture of our daily news. Yet it is important to remember that a generation ago, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of borders to the West, people who had been struggling…
At five o’clock on the afternoon of 14 May 1948, in the main hall of the Tel Aviv Museum, a ceremony took place that inaugurated the State of Israel. The ceremony began with the singing of the Jewish anthem “Hatikvah”. A few moments later David Ben-Gurion, as Prime Minister and…
In the summer of 1945, the British government agreed to allow the Jewish organisation, the Central British Fund, to bring a thousand young orphaned survivors of the Holocaust to live in Britain. Only 732 children and teens could be found among those liberated in Theresienstadt and from camps in Germany.…
The Story of Israel From Theodor Herzl to the Dream for Peace The new edition of Sir Martin’s book, published in time to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day on May 14, has been held at an introductory price for our readers throughout the month of May. On checkout enter code: story Buy Here Subscribe to…